[Themaintainers] theologies of maintenance

Mon Mar 18 15:02:53 EDT 2019

David,
Thanks for posting your question and ideas to this list-serv.
This might be further afield then you are looking to go.  I'm currently
working on thesis research towards completing a MA in Humanities @ Salve
Regina in looking at theology as civilizing force, particularly in regards
to American race/culture.  In this history, there are regular discussions
of cultural decay/moral decline that are come from and rely upon
theological readings in order to maintain certain societal practices. For
example, pro-slavery discourses (essays, letters, sermons) regularly
reference the idea of, and usually the phrasing of, cultural decay/moral
decline using a pro-slavery interpretive reading of Bible in support.
Specifically arguing that cultural decay/moral decline would be the result
if slavery was abolished\. That same practice continues in attempting to
make the case against Civil Rights, in support of segregation and against
inter-racial marriage. In each of those examples, to allow inter-racial
marriage or societal integration would be transgress God's ordained
ordering of things and bring about cultural decay/moral decline. Or, even
more potently, blaming the Civil Rights Movement in general, or leading
figures, such as MLK Jr specifically, for national or regional issues of
moral decline/cultural decay.
Whether or not these writers saw themselves as maintainers, they were
certainly working diligently to preserve and continue societal practice and
structure. Evangelical Christians are *particularly* concerned with this
idea of cultural decay/moral decline (often for the worst) and there's some
solid scholarship around this which I've included some titles below, if
interested.

This may be farther afield then you were looking to go but your initial
question resonated with some of the research I've been working on.
Peace.
Jeremy

Bennett, James B. 2016. *Religion and the Rise of Jim Crow in New Orleans*.
Princeton University Press.
Faust, Drew Gilpin. 2007. *The Ideology of Slavery: Proslavery Thought in
the Antebellum South, 1830-1860*. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University
Press.
McAlister, Melani. 2018. *The Kingdom of God Has No Borders: A Global
History of American Evangelicals*. New York: Oxford University Press.
Leonard, Bill J. 1999. “A Theology for Racism: Southern Fundamentalists and
the Civil Rights Movement.” *Baptist History and Heritage* 34 (1): 49.
Worthen, Molly. 2016. *Apostles of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in
American Evangelicalism*. New York: Oxford University Press.

On Mon, Mar 18, 2019 at 3:28 AM David Zvi Kalman <depst at sas.upenn.edu>
wrote:

> Thanks, everyone for your comments. I sent my email just before getting on
> a 15 hour flight and I was so glad to open my inbox and hear that the topic
> is of interest to others! Needless to say, I will follow up on your leads.
>
> I'll share a little more of some of the directions that I'm thinking about:
>
> - In Jewish and Islamic theology (I work in both), there are notions of
> God's role as constant maintainer of the universe. I think it may actually
> be stronger in Islam, because Islamic theology takes more seriously the
> idea that humans lack free will, that everything—including the movement of
> the celestial spheres—is directly coordinated by God.
> - There's certainly a feminist theology angle here—maintenance work is
> often associated with women, often undervalued, etc. I think this is a very
> important angle.
> - For Judaism, I suspect there's a link to the Sabbath, i.e. a day of
> non-creation, as the pinnacle of the week. Theologians like Abraham Joshua
> Heschel have already attempted to turn this into a kind of bucking of
> American notions of progress, but I don't think the notion of "maintenance"
> shows up as much.
> - I wonder—both for Judaism and Christianity—perhaps not Islam, in which
> Gabriel plays a more critical role?—if maintenance is associated with the
> notion of angels, i.e. divine beings who do lesser work or more "invisible"
> work.
> - Of course, many religions place a special emphasis on reflecting on
> goodness in the present moment. In Judaism, the blessing said after
> relieving oneself has a line, "If one [orifice] is opened, or one is closed
> [when it shouldn't be], it would be impossible to exist and stand before
> You, even for a single moment." Food blessings—basically anything that
> involves thanksgiving—reflect on the path by which the food has come to the
> table.
>
> For those interested, I'll be giving a talk at the Shalom Hartman
> Institute in Manhattan on May 1 that will cover some of these issues—I
> don't have the details yet, but I'm happy to share them when I do.
>
>
>
> On Sun, 17 Mar 2019 at 17:44, Bastien <bzg at bzg.fr> wrote:
>
>> Hi David,
>>
>> David Zvi Kalman <depst at sas.upenn.edu> writes:
>>
>> > I'm a PhD student working at the intersection of Jewish history and
>> > the history of technology. I'm currently doing research on
>> > "theologies of maintenance" — that is, understandings of God as a
>> > being without whom the universe would cease to exist/fall apart/etc.
>>
>> Not directly related to your inquiry, but I've always wondered if
>> the thought experiment of the "ship of theseus" (which dates back to
>> Heraclitus) was born out of everyday concerns, or if it was somehow
>> related to biblical or mythical narratives.
>>
>> > Does anyone know if this frame has been associated with technological
>> > maintenance in the past? There is so much rich material to work with
>> > and I would be surprised if I'm the first to look into this.
>>
>> Whitehead's theory of God in _Process and Reality_ pictures a God who
>> is both actively "building" the universe and "patient" with it.  It's
>> a mix between Leibniz's God as an architect and Spinoza's God as being
>> the nature itself in the becoming. As far as I can remember, Whitehead
>> does not refer to technical maintenance or to "repairing", but his all
>> vision resonates with technical maintainance issues a lot (or perhaps
>> that's just me).
>>
>> 2 cents,
>>
>> --
>>  Bastien
>>
>
>
> --
> David Zvi Kalman
> PhD Candidate
> Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
> University of Pennsylvania
> --
> Sent from phone
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-- 
Jeremy McGinniss
@jmymcginniss <https://twitter.com/jmymcginniss>
jeremymcginniss.wordpress.com <http://www.jeremymcginniss.wordpress.com>
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